


Dying Lilies

by failsafe



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Gen, Lake Organization, Non-Linear Narrative, back story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-21 15:23:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12460545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/pseuds/failsafe
Summary: Keep these words forever as reminder / of what sends a dying lily to the lake...- Heather Dale,Lily Maid





	Dying Lilies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ideare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ideare/gifts).



> Please do not worry; this fic does focus on the particular Lady of the Lake portrayed by Beth Riesgraf and Cassandra, especially the former. However, in brainstorming for a fic idea it became really clear that I needed a bridge for my thoughts and that there would be no better bridge than Jenkins | Galahad. I looked around at your shared links and, hopefully, you don't hate him or anything. I am particularly taken with Jenkins's reservations when he talks to Cassandra at the end of 'The Librarians and the Cost of Education.' Even though I am fully sympathetic with Cassandra's side of the argument, I am very interested in the way he views it, too, and his warnings about the Ladies of the Lake being quite ambitious in a way that worries him. A few notes before we continue, because my thoughts on this fic got a little unwieldy and I think that it requires a bit of tell to not make the showing clunky.
> 
> The title of this fic is for a song by Heather Dale called “Lily Maid.” You can listen here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si47OtTM2bE It is a song about Elaine of Astolat, the inspiration for the Tennyson poem “The Lady of Shalott.” However, as is the case in many complicated mythological cycles, Elaine of Astolat gets conflated with another Elaine, Elaine of Corbenic. Elaine of Astolat dies mere days after falling in love with Lancelot and being left behind because he is in love with Guinevere. Elaine of Corbenic, however, is Galahad's canonical mother, but her legend has often been scrubbed clean by a conflation with the other Elaine who died, as both are Elaine's who were in love with Lancelot.
> 
> Elaine of Astolat asked for Lancelot to wear a favor of hers in a jousting competition. He agreed to do so but only in disguise because Guinevere was going to attend the tournament, and he did not want her to see him wearing another woman's favor even though they could not openly show that much of their affection for each other. He is injured in the tournament, and Elaine of Astolat asks that he be brought the her bedchamber so she can nurse him back to health. She does so, but it does not result in his finding love for her as she had hoped. He leaves, never to return, and she dies from a broken heart and if floated down across the water which eventually reaches Camelot. She is found with flowers around her and a letter in her hand.
> 
> The other Elaine, Galahad's mother, has a somewhat more morally dubious and less personally tragic fate. She is “in love” with Lancelot but he is in love with Guinevere, so she goes to a sorceress named Dame Brusen. Dame Brusen gives Lancelot wine and Elaine a ring belonging to Guinevere and brings Lancelot to Elaine. They trick Lancelot into believing that he is sleeping with Guinevere, and he is none the wiser until the following morning. When he awakens to realize this rape of deception, he threatens to kill Elaine, but she tells him that she knows she is pregnant with Galahad because of a prophesy her father knew about. He agrees not to kill her and kisses her instead. (?) But anyway, some time later Elaine visits Camelot and is upset that Lancelot ignores her, so she wants Dame Brusen to help her again. She does, and they once again trick Lancelot into coming to bed with her. This time, Guinevere catches them and is jealous and angry and doesn't want to see Lancelot anymore. He goes mad and jumps out the window naked and runs away. Elaine of Corbenic and Guinevere have a confrontation about Guinevere's treatment of Lancelot. Finally, when Elaine leaves she finds Lancelot and helps him recover from his madness, and for some amount of time they lived together as husband and wife. In my research for this fic, I have learned more than I previously knew, but I also have sort of conflated these two figures in my own mind and headcanon for the sake of this fic, Jenkins's background, how it relates to Lancelot, and to the Ladies of the Lake as a sort of organization.
> 
> Addendum to this: http://www.teleflora.com/meaning-of-flowers/lily Lilies are associated with the idea that the souls of the dead have received restored innocence in the afterlife.
> 
> Thank you, also, to Seika for notes concerning Galahad, cherry-picked and perfect for helping me with this fic since I wanted the liberty to research the women, too.

 

Having lived a life that had lasted so long, Jenkins found that there were moments that seemed to fade into others until they were indistinguishable from his memory. One reason he had chosen to spend so much time alone these past decades was that he didn't find it fair. Sometimes he could remember all their faces, all their names, but he could not put together what, exactly, had been the moment when something changed and they left from his path forever.

Fate, such as it was, had other ideas. These young Librarians that had come under his supervision and care were going to wheedle into his memory, making him part of history again if only a part of their histories. Alone in the front of the Annex again, he braced his hands on a nearby surface and sighed.

“Ms. Cillian,” he admonished again in the dim room, alone. He shook his head, trying to clear it. He righted his posture and reached up, touching the bridge of his nose. Clearing his thoughts of the presence seemed only to dredge up thoughts of the past. He followed those, for now, at least, because maybe within them he would learn something. Maybe he would find something to protect them – to protect _her_ if the Ladies of the Lake had taken such a sudden interest. What she read as pure, cruel, dismissive disapproval could never be something so simple toward those women. At least, not for him.

\- - -

Sleep was easy, and sleep was the hardest thing in the world to do sometimes. It was so close to death that for months after her diagnosis, Cassandra hadn't been able to do it without waking up and feeling around, making sure that she was still in her room, still in her bed, and that she wasn't dead. Settling in to sleep now was new again, but it was still something she needed to do. She pulled a blanket over herself and burrowed beneath it, covering her head with the sky-blue cotton that made the darkness of the night softer somehow. She was asleep before she knew it, and she knew that she was asleep.

Somehow, she knew, even when someone spoke right into her ear, then was standing in front of her, that she was still sleeping.

“Cassandra,” said a familiar, warm, and almost playful voice.

Her vision came into focus with the world swimming behind a woman, her hair moving, suspended in liquid. Then, she turned away. Cassandra followed her for a few steps. Then, she found that the water made a muffled sound of crashing down, filling in, but she felt nothing. They were standing in a place, in a dry room, with stone walls and beautifully crafted furniture and rough-carved furniture, made of wood and made of stone.

“It's you,” Cassandra said softly when she recognized the light, smooth sheen of hair. It wasn't quite golden, and it wasn't quite white, but its shine reminded her of a mirror. The flowing robes she wore were different from those Cassandra had first seen – thicker, made of a fabric that seemed heavier, maybe even made from animal skin. It made her frown. Everything she saw seemed _old_ , but it felt alive, new, just like every new moment did.

The woman turned to her and beamed.

“Yes,” she agreed. Her teeth shone, too, perfect and clean. It probably was a little rude, but it occurred to Cassandra then how unlikely that might have been, given this environment and the circumstances of these times. But what were these times? “It is good to see you again,” the woman said, turning away again to stoke a fire with a metal prod that seemed rough and worn. Cassandra noticed a chill brush across her skin right before a grateful feeling of heat that filled the room.

“... How am I seeing you again?” Cassandra asked. All at once, she started feeling her heart pick up its pace. How was she here? This wasn't her time. This wasn't her room. She shouldn't have been here – _'between worlds,'_ she remembered, and she was gripped with fear.

At fifteen, when the doctors had told her that she was going to die, what was going to kill her, that there was nothing they could do to _fix it_ , only to slow it down, she had been terrified. She had always liked science, and she had always liked math. Her parents had never liked her to fill her head with fancy, with things that couldn't be proven, couldn't be reasonable and rational, even before her diagnosis. She had been proud, but when she was fifteen and about to die, she started to wonder about the _hope_ that other people had.

Whatever it meant, some people believed that death wasn't just _the end_ . Some people believed that death wouldn't be nothing and a ceasing to be. She had wanted that, at fifteen, but she hadn't been able to find the promise of it anywhere. Anyone who offered her the promise of an afterlife was someone she doubted for one reason or another. The best ones, her parents fended off, insisting that they were distractions, embarrassing themselves in the face of their daughter's tragedy. Her tragedy, and the tragedy that had made them give up on the hopes and dreams for _this life_ that they had for her. The worst ones hadn't even needed to get that far.

Now, she knew magic was real. It was really real, and there were countless ways to cheat death. There were even ways to come back from it, she had seen and heard and read about in the Library. It still hadn't occurred to her, until now, that as afraid as she was, as angry as she was, that this part of it might have taken on a different shape if she had been brave enough to ask herself.

Her heart was racing and she was trying not to tremble – this time not from cold – because what if she had died anyway? What if there were complications? What if it had gone wrong?

What if this was where she was going to go, when she died? And what if she was already here?

“I thought that it might be time for us to talk... again,” the woman said. She brought an earthen drinking vessel to her, warmed a little near the fire, with something smelling of sweet, floral plants. Cassandra took it into her hands, breathed in the pleasant scent, but didn't dare take a sip.

Jake had told her something once, about what happened if you ate in the Underworld. Which culture's mythology had that been? She didn't _think_ it was one that seemed quite so British, but this wasn't her area of expertise.

“Why's that...” Cassandra tried to ask, but she couldn't quite manage to make it sound like a question she fully wanted answered.

“Because you have faced death, bravely, once again. You have won, Cassandra Cillian,” the woman said. She pulled out a chair and sat down, its weave creaking a little as she drew her knees up a little, holding into her own drinking vessel. She brought it to her lips and took a shallow, polite sip. She pressed her lips into a line as if she was trying not to smile _too_ much.

Cassandra looked around, furtive and desperate, ad found a place to sit, too.

“I did,” she repeated in that same almost-question tone.

“Yes,” the woman replied, drawing back a little with a bemused smirk. “Didn't you know?”

“It seems like you know even more about me than I do, to be honest. Sometimes,” Cassandra said, adding the last word gently when she realized it had probably sounded like she was snapping a little. She settled into the seat she had taken and shook her head, causing her hair to spill behind her back. She met the strange woman – the Lady of the Lake's – eyes.

“You remember me, don't you?” the Lady asked.

“Of course,” Cassandra said. “You're the Lady of the Lake.”

A stifled chuckle answered her, but there was nothing derisive in it. There was, however, a soft click of the tongue when her hostess started speaking again.

“I am _one_ of the Ladies of the Lake,” she said. There was quite a long, peaceful pause before either of them spoke again. She broke the silence to add: “And you could be another.”

Cassandra looked down. She breathed in the scent of what she guessed to be some kind of tea again. She sighed as she exhaled. She almost brought it to her lips, but the intent didn't follow through to even get it halfway there. She rested it on her own knees, drawn up toward her chest. If she drank it, maybe it wouldn't be a choice anymore. It was equal parts horrifying and tempting. She lifted her chin and met the woman's eyes to get her mouth further away from the cup she had made up a terrible, haunting story about that may or may not have been true.

“Not to be rude, but... I told you I already have a job,” she said quietly.

“I understand,” the woman said. “I simply thought that things might have changed since the last time we talked.”

\- - -

The young knight who approached the border of their sanctuary, hidden beneath the placid, occasionally rippling surface of the lake, set off an alarm. Cloister bells rang, but only within the minds, hearts, and blood of certain, chosen women. It was magic that every one of the Ladies of the Lake would sense, but she happened to be the closest, and so she was the one who responded. She rose from the Lake, standing perfectly dry with her feet hidden just beneath its depths. She stood several long strides from the shore so that any man would believe he would have to wade out into the precarious, untold depths of the lake. It might be to his waist, and it might be to his death.

“Welcome to the Shore,” she said, pleasant and cool, much like the wind that blew at her back and into the young man's face. He was an angular, strong sort with innocence born of noble, naïve passion in his eyes. He withdrew with a squint at the light that bubbled up from beneath her to illuminate his face.

“You,” he said, but they had never met before. She would have remembered, and the faltering confusion on his face and in his tone confirmed that she was not at all mistaken.

“I am me,” she agreed, amused and not at all alarmed. She could take her time. He did not seem to have a hostile intent. “And you are a knight of Camelot,” she remarked, judging by his armor and the dull dyes that prescribed his allegiance. Her eyes studied him and the light beneath and behind her intensified to help her just at a mere thought. This had a secondary effect that she could not have planned but which pleased her. The young man, the knight, lifted his shield to cover his face as if the light were a threat and would burn him. She saw it, the cross daubed across it in ancient, apparently indelible blood. “I believe... Galahad?” she asked, genuinely pausing as she tried to place the name with the information that passed around and through the Lake.

He lowered his shield and his squint was now closer to a wary glare.

“How do you know me?”

“I do not, but I know the stories of you and the tales of your nobility, Knight of Camelot,” she answered. “Now, tell me,” she ordered, a little more loudly, her voice carrying with a booming echo, “what brings you to the Lake?”

“I am on a quest,” he informed her, “for the—”

She rolled her eyes and cut him off. She had heard this story before, and she would again, many, many times, for as long as the Lake held together.

“Yes, yes,” she agreed. “For King Arthur,” she summarized. “How can I help you?”

Usually, they asked for magic. They asked for weapons, asked for disguises, asked for the ability to deceive and win, or – at best – for healing. All of those things were things she could provide, but she had to decide whether or not it was worthy. She had to decide whether the cost was worth the outcome. It was left up to her, which was a gift not known to all women who lived in their time or – judging by some of their magics – for much time to come. She was alone in this part of the Lake for now, too.

“I come to ask something of you. I... was hoping we could talk,” Galahad replied, a little unsure of himself but managing to get the request out. She thought that it might be her person or the circumstances of their meeting that brought the hesitance. He seemed like a man who had no doubt of his calling and no doubt of honor.

Whether she decided what he wanted was worthy or not, he would be good practice and wouldn't bring any harm to them.

“Walk out into the water,” she said as she made her decision.

He cleared his throat.

“Walk on the water?” he asked, catching the allusion dubiously.

“Walk into it,” she corrected with a quirk of her smile.

The water behaved as it should if it were on this plane until the young knight was nearly up to his neck in it. He was breathing faster, and she could hear it. 

“Trust the Lake,” she encouraged him. 

She didn't sense much hesitance, but she heard him take a deep inhale and saw him close his eyes as he stepped further into what must have felt heavy, muddy, and dangerous. She met him below the rippling surface, still perfectly dry. He stood there on dry ground, dripping from the eyebrows down. The very crown of his head had been spared as he had breached the divide between the lake that seemed and the Lake that was. 

He breathed in and it made a wet, spluttering sound. He coughed, and then he was clear. He blinked at her. He looked around at the dry, inviting room that looked spoke of what was done here. The work of an apothecary. The work of a sorceress. The work of a scientist, though that word would not be known in the world of men for many years to come. Rough-carved stone, polished wood, blown glass, and a burning fire. Herbs, small rabbits and birds held in cages specially sized for each of them. Scrolls with maps and letters. Everything here had a purpose, but almost no one of this time would have understood. 

Galahad walked over to the scrolls first and nearly reached out to touch them. Before she had to intervene, he seemed to realize that the water still training in soft rivulets from his clothing and armor would damage them. He voluntarily pulled away to look at her instead. 

“So it's true,” he said simply. 

“You will have to enlighten me,” she answered with a sly smile. She tilted her head, blonde hair falling across her shoulder, and came closer. 

“That you're all engaged in sorcery,” he remarked. 

“Sometimes, but that is not the half of it.” 

“You know that many say you are demons or have given birth to them,” Galahad said. It sounded more pitying than anything else, and it piqued her curiosity. He looked down at one of his gauntlets and set about to remove both of them. 

“That should be obviously untrue, but I do not take from your tone that you believe it.” 

“I'm afraid I can't. At least, not entirely. I... have evidence, or at least a story, to the contrary.” 

“And what story is that?” the woman asked, finding herself intrigued and calm. She gestured to two of the chairs by the crackling fire and led the way, taking a seat on the edge of one. 

“The story of my mother,” he said. 

The woman's brow furrowed and she folded her hands in her lap. She remained seated very straight and tall. When the silence went on for a moment, she interjected to spur him to continue. 

“And her name?” she asked. 

“Her name...” Galahad answered, and there was an obvious pain in his voice – restraint and tenuously held dignity and an ache deeper than all of that – but he pressed forward, “was Elaine.” 

“Is she the one you came to ask about?” the Lady of the Lake – this Lady of the Lake, for there were always others, there always would be others for as long as they could survive – asked. She did not, at first, betray the way her piqued interest suddenly came with a pricked heart that felt heavier in her chest. 

“I came here because my path brought me here, but... if you know anything of my mother, I am afraid I won't be able to complete my quest with a clear mind without asking,” Galahad said. There was a look of cool, reluctant hope in his eyes. 

“What do you know of her?” the Lady of the Lake asked. 

“I know that she gave birth to me, her name was Elaine, and the father of her child was Lancelot,” he recited. 

“Lancelot – another of Arthur's knights,” the Lady of the Lake said. 

“I must serve alongside him, knowing that he is my father and that he wronged my mother but nothing else,” Galahad said, and it seemed that this was the source of greatest weakness and distraction to him. It was a mystery he could not bear the weight of. And so, the Lady of the Lake decided that she would tell him. It was not magic nor a weapon nor prophecy. It was simply the truth. 

She slid as far forward on her seat as she could without standing and reached out to place her hand on the knight's now bared wrist. 

“Your mother was one of us,” she said. “She was very young when the Lake asked her to join with us, and she had only just started.” 

“You look very young,” Galahad remarked, interjected, perhaps out of nervousness for this to continue, but after a sheepish, weak smile he lapsed back into silence. 

The Lady of the Lake pressed onward with a gracious smile of her own. 

“But I am not,” she said, “and I believe your words tell me you sense that.” 

“What does that mean?” he pressed. 

“It means that some who join the Lake are blessed with something very nearly like immortality,” she said. “The knowledge we possess is offered to those who show great promise and merit. It is also offered to those who would not otherwise have such an opportunity in the world of men.” 

“Why was it offered to my mother?” 

“She showed great promise and great vision for the ways of magic.” 

Galahad made a face. It was one of obvious discomfort. He might have disapproved, might have been afraid, but either way he watched the woman as if she glowed like the sun, squinting but waiting for her to carry on. 

“But her... downfall was the fact that she could not let go of the world of men.” 

“You expected her to?” Galahad demanded, his heart full of a son's love for his mother even if he had never had time to really know her. The Lady of the Lake knew that this was the greatest tragedy of Elaine's life – the unnatural way it had ended, both in cause and effect. The effect of her death was that she had left a son behind, alone, for his father's love which would never return, and that was something neither magic nor all the knowledge beyond it could explain. 

“We have great hopes and plans for your world, but most of us choose to live apart from it. We are still human, or we started out of your kind. Many of us were dying in our own flesh but strove to live, to make some mark on the world or our own lives, before we died. The Lake came to let us know that there was a path to live longer. Others of us were pressed back by the forces of this world – the hearts of men, the beds of men, and the vows we made to them, with or without our will being with them. Your mother... was one of this latter kind,” the Lady of the Lake said, taking a deep, deep breath when she let out the utterance no matter how it might hurt this young man. She glanced at his eyes and found that she didn't find it painful to hold their gaze. His own was soft, and dampened, but it bore no shame here. 

“An-And you?” Galahad asked. She could tell the question was for show and his pride. It must be, but it had been so long since anyone had asked. 

“I was the former, a long time ago,” she said. She squeezed his wrist and brushed her thumb back and forth. She felt that there was some coolness in his skin, but nothing dangerous, and it warmed beneath her hand. She could be kind to him, and she could let him live in the world his mother had very nearly chosen and had, instead, chosen to leave, a little less of a long time ago.

 


End file.
